Saudi Arabia, a major strategic ally of the US, has been at the centre of an oil output cut dispute with Russia that unleashed a price war and sent already-volatile crude prices to their 18-year lows. American senators from oil-producing states reproached the Saudi ambassador in a heated phone call and threatened to rethink diplomatic relations with the kingdom, according to their accounts of the [...]

The OPCW has issued its first report explicitly blaming Syria’s government for chemical attacks on civilians, pointing to three incidents in 2017 and saying there’re “reasonable grounds” to believe the air force was responsible. “Attacks of such a strategic nature would have only taken place on the basis of orders from the higher authorities of the Syrian Arab Republic military command,� [...]

The United States government has revealed its contempt for human compassion and global solidarity by refusing to lift draconian sanctions on Iran and Venezuela during the Covid-19 crisis, director Oliver Stone has argued. Iran has suffered immensely from the virus, Stone noted in an op-ed published by the New York Daily News, but due to US sanctions the Islamic Republic is “reportedly the only c [...]

The US Treasury Department has slapped fresh sanctions on Iran, accusing several Iranian firms of aiding terrorism. Meanwhile, Tehran and the UN have called for the easing of sanctions amid the Covid-19 pandemic. The Treasury sanctioned 15 individuals and five companies on Thursday, accusing them of supporting and acting “on behalf of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps-Qods Force,” conside [...]

The INSTEX trading mechanism was previously created by European countries to bypass unilateral restrictions, imposed against the Islamic Republic by Washington, as the US threatened to hit those trading with Tehran via secondary sanctions. Iran, however, has repeatedly criticised INSTEX for not functioning properly. France, Germany, and the United Kingdom have officially confirmed conclud [...]

Iran’s New Year celebration of Nowruz finds it weathering a perfect storm of US sanctions, low oil prices and Covid-19. The resulting humanitarian crisis may make it even more resilient, as Iranians rally around their government. Iran is facing an existential crisis, brought on by a combination of economic, political and social emergencies which, when combined, threaten to bring the nation to it [...]

Plummeting oil prices have sparked another round of predictions about the economic collapse of Russia – this time from US President Donald Trump, who sounded a lot like his predecessor Barack Obama on the subject. The price of crude oil has crashed to $20 this week, due to a one-two punch of Saudi Arabia flooding the market with record output and a sharp drop in global demand owing to the corona [...]

The situation in northern Syria has grown more volatile since Ankara accused Russia of killing 33 Turkish troops in a Thursday airstrike outside Idlib as Turkey’s NATO allies weigh the option of intervention. An expert told Sputnik NATO involvement is unlikely, but so is Damascus letting up the assault as they try to rebuild their country. [...]

The State Department’s special envoy for Syria has just admitted that the US aims to defend jihadist militants in Idlib against ‘Russian aggression,’ proving once again that the swamp in Foggy Bottom is alive and well. [...]

Global stock markets hit bear territory this week, with oil prices experiencing their biggest plunge since the 1991 Gulf War. Boom Bust is joined by Professor Richard Wolff of the Economic Update to discuss the ongoing oil crisis. He explains that the US, which wanted "energy independence," decided 10-20 years ago to go into the fracking business simply because it was profitable. [...]

A Syrian Air flight has landed at Aleppo International Airport for the first time in years, marking a milestone in the recovery of the city, which has been returning to normal life from the abyss of its civil war. The commercial flight, carrying Syrian officials and journalists, landed in Aleppo on Wednesday, some 40 minutes after taking off from the capital, Damascus. The arrival of the Airbus A3 [...]

Under the 2018 Sochi agreement, Turkey was supposed to disarm and disassociate itself from the terrorist organization Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. Its failure to do so has sown the seeds of Turkey’s inevitable defeat in Syria. When Turkey threw its weight behind the anti-Assad rebellion in 2011, it did so believing that it would be able to dictate the outcome on the ground by controlling the main organ [...]

The December 27 rocket attack on the K-1 Air Base in Kirkuk, northern Iraq, which killed a US civilian contractor and injured four US servicemen and two Iraqi security officers, led to a dangerous escalation of tensions between the US and Iran. Iraq’s military and intelligence community believe Daesh (ISIS),* not Iran-affiliated Iraqi Shia Muslim militia group Khaitab Hezbollah, was responsible [...]

Israeli strikes on Damascus suburbs put a civilian aircraft in serious danger and forced it to divert to Russia’s Khmeimim airbase as the Syrian air defense was activated to repel the attack, the Russian military said. An Airbus A320 flying from Tehran to the Syrian capital was forced to make an emergency landing following an Israeli missile attack, the Russian Defense Ministry said. It added th [...]

The Syrian town has been an outpost of the Jabhat an-Nusra* terrorist group in Idlib province. It is situated at a strategic crossroads of the M4 highway connecting Latakia and Aleppo and the M5 connecting Latakia and Damascus. The Syrian army has fully regained control of the town of Saraqib in Idlib Province, according to a military source. [...]

President of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) Mahmoud Abbas announced on Saturday that all ties between the PNA and Israel, as well as the United States, would be cut following Donald Trump’s unveiling of his long-advertised peace plan for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which many saw as being strongly biased towards the Jewish state. [...]

The plan was previously rejected by the Palestinian Authority, which vowed to cut ties with Israel and the US, urging people to participate in protests against the deal. People are gathering near the US Embassy in Lebanon in Beit Aaoukar to protest against the "deal of the century" – a new peace plan for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that was recently announced by US President Donald Trump. [...]

Following the strike on two US military outposts in retaliation for the Trump-commissioned killing of General Qasem Soleimani, POTUS reported no losses, with the Pentagon eventually saying 64 service personnel sustained what he referred to as “brain injuries”. According to a spokesman for the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, cited by Press TV, the alleged number of “brain injuries” suff [...]

Moscow doubts the viability of the new peace plan for the Middle East recently unveiled by Donald Trump, as it is incompatible with UN decisions on the matter and does not sit well with the Arab world. Among other things, it cements Israel's sovereignty over the occupied West Bank; the Jewish state would also annex vast swathes of fertile Palestinian lands. Whereas the plan calls for establishing [...]

A spokesman for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has accused the US of covering up deaths at a base in Iraq after a ballistic missile attack. The US insists nobody was killed, and that its troops suffered brain injuries. [...]

The Pentagon announced Tuesday that 50 - not 34 - US troops sustained various levels of brain injury from Tehran’s strike on Iraqi bases earlier this month. One expert explained to Sputnik that the Trump administration’s decision to trickle out this information is just a continuation of a series of lies from the White House regarding Iran. Ben Norton, a journalist with The Grayzone and co-host [...]

During self-congratulatory remarks about his “deal of the century” to solve the Israel-Palestine conflict, Donald Trump threw in another boast; he claimed US forces defeated “100 percent” of the Islamic State caliphate. Have they? “Thanks to the courage of US forces, the ISIS territorial caliphate — 100 percent — not 95 percent, not 99 or any other percent — 100 percent of their ca [...]